Prayers for Peace
May 20, 2020
As we celebrate the Risen Christ, we invite you to join us as we pray for peace in our world, in our homes and in our hearts. We will continue to offer Wednesday 'Prayers for Peace' (in the Taizé format) throughout the COVID crisis.
If you couldn't join us live, no worries. The link to view it 'on demand' is here. Taizé is also wonderful to listen to when you're working or reading . . . wherever and whenever you want!
With music, prayer, silence and reflection, Taizé (pronounced ‘tay-zay’) will bring calm to your soul and provide you strength for the days ahead. Find a quiet place in your home. Bring a few candles with you. Then open your heart and your mind. Read one of the meditations at the beginning of each silent moment. Follow along with the readings and the song lyrics here and participate more fully with us.
And we begin . . .
As we gather in silence, please light your candle(s). Let the light that each of us catches from this time of waiting, bring peace to our hearts and to our suffering world.
We thank you for sharing your faith journey with us in this peaceful hour of reflection. Meditation is a key that can open many doors along the path to God. We tend to be so outer-focused that we lose track of the real path, which is the inner journey to a personal relationship with our Lord.
In the silence of the heart God speaks.
If you face God in prayer and silence,
God will speak to you.
- from ‘No Greater Love’ by Mother Teresa
Be Still and Know
Sing 5 times:
Be Still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be.
Reading (1 Peter 2:19-25)
For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
“He committed no sin,
and no deceit was found in his mouth.”
When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” For “you were like sheep going astray,” but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
The Word of the Lord.
Resp: Thanks be to God.
Meditation Reflection
Silent Meditation is the inner prayer of the heart where we are simply being with God. In silence we humbly accept that God knows our needs, we trust in his love which created us, and persevere with the knowledge that his love will eventually complete us.
Adoramus
Sing 5 times:
Adorámus, adorámus,
et benedícimus te, Christe.
(Christ, we adore you and we bless you.)
Reading (John 15:9-17)
Jesus said to his disciples:
“As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.
“I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.
This I command you: love one another.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Resp: Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Meditation Reflection
The conscious mind, with its worrying and negative beliefs, is the cause of our material predicament. Inside and behind this worrying process, the perfection and abundance of the divine realm is persistently trying to press itself into our minds and lives. If we still this mind, then we get out of the way and allow the grandeur of God to enter our existence.
Like a Child Rests
Sing 5 times:
Like a child rests in its mother's arms, so will I rest in you.
Like a child rests in its mother's arms, so will I rest in you.
Meditation Reflection
Our agitated mind is constantly dwelling on the past, reacting to some event in our world or preoccupied with fears and concerns about the future. Stilling the mind allows our little self, our worries and concerns, to take a break. If this little self can get quiet, our true Self can emerge. God can express Himself in our world.
Sacred Creation
Sing 5 times:
Sacred the land, sacred the water, sacred the sky, holy and true.
Sacred all life, sacred each other;
all reflect God who is good.
Meditation Reflection
Worries and concerns of our fearful self, like wind on a lake, keep things stirred up and keep us removed from our peaceful self. Anxiety, fear and anger are unproductive protective mechanisms that keep peace at a distance in our world. Taking a break from these primitive defenses is possible. We just have to allow it.
Intercessions
Hear the prayers that rise up like incense before you.
Hear our prayer, hear our prayer, God of compassion, listen to our prayer.
Meditation Reflection
Understood in this way,
we can see that silence – or being still – is a type of prayer,
an active acknowledgment of God, Spirit.
The divine power of Spirit that can be felt during silent prayer
helps us feel the healing and protecting presence of our Father in heaven.
Go In Peace
Sing 5 times:
Go in peace, and may God's Word light your way.
Go in peace, and know that for you we pray.
Go in peace, to follow Christ day by day.
The Lord himself will fight for you. Just stay calm.
-Exodus 14:14